it is relatively rare that a major donor is using your acceptance of donations to get social cover for an island-based extortion operation,
Now wait just a goddamn minute, I thought the whole schtick here was that our gracious correspondent is better than anyone else at evaluating situations that are relatively rare but nonetheless highly consequential
Over the last few years, I have fully gotten on board with the idea that the haunting vestige of the idea of people as property is one of the core weaknesses of American society, and the "western civilization" enthusiasts that promote its supremacy.
Of course, there are a lot of other people who have been on board with that point of view for centuries.
Nitpicking, but at what point do we start calling it race pseudoscience? Letting the creeps have even a tiny bit of legitimacy is too much, especially as mainstream outfits are working overtime to legitimize them.
Essay proclaiming broad stagnation is now well over a decade old, Thiel stands by that thesis, but hey, Thiel himself definitely isn't part of the problem! Invest in blockchain-powered AI gene editing today!
I keep telling people that Thiel isn't some kind of boogeyman end-boss hiding behind Musk, because he's clearly just as loaded and incompetent as Musk, he only takes more care to keep it out of the public eye... but every time he pops his head up for some garbage like this, I am forced to reconsider that latter conclusion.
For Yarvin, it always is and always will be someone else's fault
I actually think it's part-and-parcel of Yarvin's personality. As much as he rails against "the Cathedral," PMCs, whatever, he himself is a perfect example of a pathological middle manager. Somebody who wants power without having to shoulder ultimate responsibility. He craves the childishly simplified social environment of a medieval-fantasy king's court, but he doesn't want to be the king himself. He wants to be (and has been, up until now) the scheming vizier who can run his manipulation games in the background, deciding who gets in front of the king but not having to take the heat if the king makes a bad decision. (And the "kings" he works for have made plenty of bad decisions, but consequences have only just begun to catch up.)
I suspect this newfound mainstream attention is far more uncomfortable than it is validating for him. Perhaps the NYT profile was a burst of exhilaration, but the shine has worn off quickly. This correlates with the story last year about him coming back to Urbit as a "wartime CEO." If Urbit is so damn important for building his ridiculous vision, why wasn't he running it the whole time? He doesn't actually want to be CEO of anything. Power without responsibility.
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why does this seem vaguely like a threat
On the other hand, bombing foreign data centers, likely located in densely populated urban areas, would be justified and morally upstanding if it seems like they might be incarnating the imaginary computer god! I'm glad we have such a nuanced thinker guiding our modern morality.
I especially want to be sure that everyone here is aware that the video thumbnail clearly shows that JD Vance was not seated upon, or otherwise interacting with, a couch. JD Vance was calmly seated in a standard office chair for the duration of this interview. Any posts containing out-of-context references to couches will be dealt with vigorously.
"Leaking rationalist-evidence-bits" is an unexpectedly top-tier euphemism for the aftermath of digesting Wendy's chili
please be gentle with my child, they will soon have a presence on the discount paperback rack at the local grocery store
Huh. Are the remaining "classical liberals" in the wild just naturally covered in this much slime, or is it something Yud applied to himself specifically for this conversation?